I'd like to thank riotgirl2005 for the +fav, and whitefeathers and pinkdynamite for the very nice reviews!
Thank you guys! 3
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A friendly reminder: Van and Hitomi are 26 in this story, so I'm projecting how their personalities would be if they were older.
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That night, Hitomi dreams of fire.
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Sunday dawns overcast. When Van wakes up, it's raining.
He knows enough of how things work by now, and he puts a kettle on the stove to make some coffee. He really likes it- coffee. It's a pity that it doesn't exist in Gaia.
'Van…'
Behind him, Hitomi is wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. A 'good morning' dies on his lips when he takes in her tired eyes, and the dark bags beneath them.
'I had another dream…' she says- funny how Van feels like he's forgetting something. Maybe he also dreamed of something, but who can tell? He certainly can't, and much less when her haunted look reveals that, impossibly somehow, her dreams must have been connected to him.
'Do you want to tell me about it?' he asks.
She lets her body tiredly drop down onto a kitchen chair.
'I saw a city burning. There was a castle, under the shadow of a great green tree. It also burned. When everything was fire, I began to burn, too. That's when I woke up. When I fell back asleep, I dreamt the same. Over and over. All night.'
Van hides his shock and the terrifying wave of cold recognition from her by turning around, and turning the kettle off.
'Damn…' he says quietly, under his breath. 'You should… maybe you should've woken me up.'
Hitomi's keen perception caught the hitch in his breath, however. 'What was that place, Van?' She knows he knows.
'Fanelia,' he says. Whispers. 'Do you think it's happening now?', he ventures.
'No. It hasn't happened yet.'
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They sit, short of crammed, by the window-door that opens to her little balcony, watching the rain fall; both of them holding the coffee mugs close to preserve their warmth.
At Hitomi's request, Van is telling her more about Fanelia. He feels he owes it to her, for all her help and all her nightmares. He tells her tales of great warriors, and tales of dragons. He's saying that there's hardly any story in the realm that doesn't begin with a dragon when he realizes he's most likely never spoken this much to anyone before. Even before Folken got married, when they had dinner together almost every night, their conversations were pleasant, interesting, but not too wordy nor too personal. When they veered off the daily events in the kingdom, they usually discussed Fanelian lore, a topic both of them were passionate about: legends, folktales, old soldiers' tales and ancient poems. They knew every song that was ever sung on the castle halls and out on the streets, though they rarely sang if they were sober. The memory makes him smile.
'What's on your mind?' Hitomi asks, surrendering to her curiosity.
'What alcohol do people drink here? Spirits? Beer?'
'Many kinds, really,' she answers, slightly surprised.
Still smiling, Van tells her that they should 'have some, later, if it is fine with you'.
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To close the Sunday on a hopefully cheerfuller note, they rented out the last part of the movie trilogy they were watching –The Return of the King– and Hitomi introduced Van to ice-cream (which both unsettled him and surprised him- oddly enough. He said it was too sweet for him) and Earthean alcohol, picking Western-style wine over beer and sake because that's what Hitomi thought a prince would like to drink better.
She herself had only tasted wine on seldom occasions, and she was rather excited. Excited enough, at least, to leave behind those awful dreams of destruction and fire.
When the movie ended (its extended edition, mind you) and after they'd discussed things like how Van wouldn't want Gandalf as a royal advisor, Hitomi's favor of fair-haired Legolas, and the (to Van's mind) suspicious lack of dragons; Hitomi took out a couple of glasses, which she wished could have been a tad fancier for wine, and fished a long while in her kitchen drawers for a corkscrew, which she'd seen only one and the previous tenant had left behind.
Van reacted unexpectedly again: he smiled quietly with the first sip, then laughed pleasantly with the second one.
'What's so funny?' asked Hitomi, feeling slightly self-conscious. Did I do something wrong?
Van tasted it again. Again, he smiled. 'Yeah, there's no doubt. It's just that I know this, from Gaia. I've tasted it before- the people from Asturia drink this. What's it called?'
'Wine,' Hitomi answered, blinking her eyes curiously.
'They called it vino, or something. Sounds kind of similar, too.'
Hitomi slowly smiled. 'What a weird connection between our places, don't you think?'
'Could've been worse,' Van mused, halfway between stern and jesting 'It definitely could've been worse…'
Hitomi hmmmed in agreement. And, as nonchalantly as she could manage, she asked: 'And do you like it?'
'Yeah,' Van smiled, warmed by memories of home, 'It's definitely better than that ice-cream thing from before…'
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It's Van who, with his unique sort of rough natural grace, corks the bottle when it's 2/3 empty, and takes it back to the kitchen. In the short seconds he's gone, Hitomi wonders if he ever loses that cool composure he has, where nothing seems to get to him too deeply. Maybe it's just some kind of shield he puts up to keep the world at a distance he's comfortable with, but she knows she doesn't know him that well to be able to tell. She idly recognizes it's probably the wine that brought forth these thoughts: she didn't even know she had them.
When Van's back, he regards her with a tiny smile of amusement.
'Not too used to drinking, are you?'
Hitomi sheepishly admits she's not. 'And you?'
'Not used to it, no,' he says, shrugging, sitting back on the cushion they placed by the window again, 'But I think I hold it better than you.'
She sticks her tongue out at him. His little smile becomes a bit like a 'see what I mean?' smile, but not an annoying one. They sit in silence for a long while, looking at the setting sun.
'We did this, back home, my brother and I,' says Van, his eyes never leaving the view of the sky.
After a respectful while, she quietly asks: 'What's he like?'
'He's…' the words don't come easily, and he realizes it's because he's never had to describe his brother before. 'Kind. Gentle. Wise.'
He loves him, Hitomi concludes with a happy smile, and her thoughts drift to her own little brother, studying abroad. 'You must miss him…'
Van's eyes are full of sunset, and they catch the fanning colors with their strange shape and foreign russet-colored hue. 'Hmm. Well, he's got his duties, and I've got mine. We don't spend much time together now.'
'Tell me more?'
He looks at her, slightly over his shoulder, with an unreadable look.
'Times like these… we usually ended up remembering folksongs. I can show you, if you want. A song.'
'You sing?' Hitomi asks, caught by surprise.
He looks coolly nonplussed. 'Everyone in Fanelia sings.'
Although that makes perfect sense, she hadn't thought he had the type, but… Then again, for the last days he's told me so, so many tales and stories. And I listened, like caught in some kind of spell.
'Please, sing. I'd love to listen.' And, as an afterthought- 'You're great at telling stories, you know?'
He smiles a collected smile that doesn't tell her that no, no one's told him that before, probably because he never bothers much to talk to anyone who would be telling him such things.
'Thanks.' The song he chooses is one his father used to whistle when he was distracted enough not to notice he was whistling, a very not-kingly habit. It easily became his favorite song, after his father passed away.
'It's called The Dragon of Green-the-Glen.'
The song is in Fanelian- a melodious, raspy language. She can make sense of it, and understands it's about a boy who goes into the forest alone, looking for a dragon. He wants to kill it, then bring its heart back home to impress a girl he likes. But after killing the dragon and returning home, the girl is sad, because she would have rather had the boy's heart than the dragon's. Before the song sounds like it's finished, however, Van stops.
Hitomi looks at him, blinking slowly: 'Does it really end there?'
Van shakes his head. 'No, but the rest is sad. I usually don't sing it.'
'How sad?'
'The dragon's family puts a curse on the boy. He is drafted as a soldier and sent away to war, where he dies in battle. The girl then dies of a broken heart.'
She frowns. 'That's terrible'.
'Hmm. Yeah. But that's life, anyway.'
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Later, Van pushes his futon to be near the window.
When she almost-knows it's because he must like to wake with dawn-light, she thinks with a frown that this situation can't go on like this much longer. Some kind of solution has to be found, otherwise, she feels something sad will happen.
'I shouldn't be doing this…?' Van asks, confused- he mistakes the thoughtful look on her face.
'Oh, no, do,' she says, 'I'm just sorry you won't see the stars from there.'
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There is the taste of earth and coal in her mouth.
Hitomi feels the crisp ground under her feet- charcoaled twigs and blackburnt tree-logs. It's hard to breathe through the air thick with smoke, she brings a tattered sleeve to her nose, but there she takes in the smell of ash, engrained in the fabric.
She then knows this place has been like this for months now.
Looking around, bewildered, at the disparaged wasteland, she forgets that she had, initially, been looking for something.
In the distance, far beyond shattered tree stumps upon shattered tree stumps, she sees great black shadows running from the fire, going towards the fire.
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The alarm clock starts her awake.
She lies there, looking up at the ceiling, calming down her beating heart and the visions of destruction.
It hasn't come to happen yet, she thinks. Somehow, she just knows- just like she knows these are not dreams at all. Not dreams, but visions.
She suppresses a sigh and sets out to make some tea.
Outside, again, it's raining.
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She took the bus to work. Looking out of the window, she saw fire, consuming fire, hidden amongst the heavy downpour.
What a depressing way to start the day… she sulked.
Not really used to taking the bus, she arrived earlier than she normally did. Still dragging the weariness of a bad night's sleep, she sluggishly made her way to her little office, focusing exclusively on the classes she had to teach that day, and the activities she'd choose for the students to do indoors. Of course she'd have all the classes she could in the indoors gym, which was almost as having normal, outdoors classes. She inspected the weekly schedule that had been dutifully updated on the teacher's board. Hmm. The theater group had booked the gym for the last two periods. Shoot.
A voice behind her, that belonged to the school nurse (whose office was next to hers), greeted her pleasantly. 'What a day, huh?' she commented.
Prying her eyes from the teacher's board, Hitomi wished her a good morning too, and scowled at the rain. 'And my last two periods will have to be in a classroom…'
'Oh dear,' the nurse articulated in solidarity. And then, she commented: 'I saw you on the promenade on Saturday... I didn't come say hi because you were with a guy, and I didn't want to intrude. But hey, who was he?'
'Oh... He's a friend... From abroad.' (Hitomi was a lousy liar, so she was thankful that she'd had the foresight to think of a convincing story beforehand.)
'Really? How cool! Where's he from?'
'Finland'. (A story that would explain what a notoriously foreign man was doing in her apartment. And why no one could understand him. And why she couldn't really tell when he would leave.)
'... Oh my. That's exotic…'
Waiting for the bell to save her from more questions, yes, those were sure to turn out to be the longest five minutes in Hitomi's life.
'And how did you meet him?' the nurse asked.
'Couchsurfer,' she replied, trying to appear nonchalant rather than fidgety.
'Are you for real? I didn't know you did that! How cool is that!? So he's staying at your place?' –and, without waiting for confirmation- 'How long is he staying?'
'Well I... Ehm.. he's not sure yet.'
'Right... Well, as long as he doesn't annoy you...', the nurse mused, conversationally. Hitomi usually liked her well, but today, today she wished she would just drop it. Wishful thinking, she thought. Instead, she replied:
'Yeah. We get along pretty well, though. I actually don't mind having him around.'
'I wouldn't either… I mean he did look pretty handsome…'
Hitomi just stared. She wasn't going to have this conversation. She really wasn't.
'It's idle, anyway. He'll be gone soon, so it's not use seeing him like that. Would you excuse me? I'm gonna try to talk to Mrs. Aiko, of the theater group…'
'Oh, of course! Hurry, before the bell rings!'
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Rainy days are the worst, in her opinion.
They transform her usually competent high-schoolers into little children, and she is time and again metaphorically demoted from PE teacher to kindergarten teacher; as she unsuccessfully tries to goad them into learning the theoretical aspect of field sports required by the curricula- which they never want to do, which she anyway hates to teach, and which no one really cares about, after all. Rainy days are dreadful days.
She gives her students in the last period a stupid group assignment designed to distract them for at least ten minutes from being unruly 14-year-olds. Ten minutes that will stretch into twenty, or more, if she's lucky, and by the time the bell rings to go home they won't have done much, but at least she won't be going back home with a headache. Or, rather, with too strong a headache, since she's had one since midday.
She stands up, walks towards the window. The rain falls thick, relentless.
A vision flashes for just a second- and then it's like she's traded fire for water. She sighs.
A patch of a conversation drifts her way. It's a group of students –male students, all with crooked ties and untucked shirts, none who wants to be there (but neither does she, so how to judge them?), and one's saying:
'Have you guys heard about warehouse 11?'
None answers like they've heard about it, and the kid goes on: 'It's a warehouse the eastern district. They say it's possessed… I heard that the owner made a pact with a demon, and…'
'…and maybe you want to share this tale with the rest of the class, Mr. Tanaka?'
Sometimes, Hitomi marvels herself, at how much she sounds like her old schoolteachers.
'Ms. Kanzaki, uhm… it's just a rumor, you know.'
She eyes him mischievously. 'Perhaps. But who knows, if you ever check it out and the demon comes after you, the theory of track running might just save your life.'
The class roars with laughter. Good.
A small victory- maybe she's not that much like her old teachers, after all.
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There is a tiny seashell on the kitchen table when she comes back home, and Van's reading again. She wonders if he's made any progress.
'Had a good day?' Hitomi asks, toweling her rain-sprinkled hair.
Van looks up from the book- his dark, unusual lashes frame the veiled frustrated look in his eyes.
'I had a weird feeling today,' he says, simply, 'Like I should go back to the seaside.'
Hitomi's brows arched. A feeling… a sign, maybe? Surprise was all she could identify within her.
'And? Was there anything…?
He shakes his head.
'Seashells. Just that. '
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A/N
- Of course Van drinks- he's 26! :D Plus it's my story, no sexy dragon-rider-king is going to not-drink, hahaha.
- They rented the movies because it's Japan, and I believe they're more legal than us.
- The song "The Dragon of Green-the-Glen" doesn't exist, but if you want to feel very sad, imagine it's sung to the tune of 'Fatal', that song Folken always whistles…
I'm rewatching Escaflowne with my boyfriend. He says he's team Allen. I'm confused. Wth.
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Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this story! The pacing, mostly: what do you think about it?
